231–240 of 452 posts
I'm a more productive engineer now that I have small kids than I ever was before. I don't have time for bullshit. I don't build my own PCs, I buy Macs. I don't waste time building some over-architected nonsense on a side project, I ship the MVP. When I do take time away from my kids I maximize it by learning three or four new technologies, patterns, or libraries at once. When you realize how short time really is you…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This blames poor people for being poor. Huh? He said all the people at the top are not lazy. "All people at the bottom are lazy" doesn't follow from his statement.
Generally as a matter of rhetoric one does not pick out a single attribute to predicate of a class of people, unless one wishes to imply that other classes do not possess the attribute, or that the attribute is a sufficient condition for membership in the class. What makes it a dirty rhetorical trick is, of course, that one can then reply to one's critics "ah, but I didn't explicitly say what you read into that".
1) Got rich and weren't driven.
2) Got rich and were driven.
3) Stayed poor and weren't driven.
4) Stayed poor but were driven.
pg statement says he's been exposed with group 2, which he highlighted. You seem to accuse him of implicitly highlighting group 3, and would prefer he implicitly (explicitly?) highlights group 4.
Is that the gist of the argument?
The statements "Most people who get rich tend to be fairly driven." and "Most people who are fairly driven tend to get rich." are not logically equivalent.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This blames poor people for being poor. Huh? He said all the people at the top are not lazy. "All people at the bottom are lazy" doesn't follow from his statement.
Generally as a matter of rhetoric one does not pick out a single attribute to predicate of a class of people, unless one wishes to imply that other classes do not possess the attribute, or that the attribute is a sufficient condition for membership in the class. What makes it a dirty rhetorical trick is, of course, that one can then reply to one's critics "ah, but I didn't explicitly say what you read into that".
Social darwinism has always been popular with the top 0.01% (and those who strive to join thes. Whether they earned their money collecting taxes, collecting rents, as entrepreneurs, or as the product of crime, the wealthiest have always written in the manner pg did.
Part of me is outraged by this, because I used to respect pg.
Part of me is realizes that perhaps I'm the fool for thinking that pg was different in any meaningful way than any other plutocrat.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This blames poor people for being poor. Huh? He said all the people at the top are not lazy. "All people at the bottom are lazy" doesn't follow from his statement.
Generally as a matter of rhetoric one does not pick out a single attribute to predicate of a class of people, unless one wishes to imply that other classes do not possess the attribute, or that the attribute is a sufficient condition for membership in the class. What makes it a dirty rhetorical trick is, of course, that one can then reply to one's critics "ah, but I didn't explicitly say what you read into that".
There really is severe suffering at the bottom of the economic scale here (SV/peninsula), and in my opinion it is the shared responsibility of those of us who have lots of options to figure out how we can help to relieve some of the suffering. However, I don't thing that needs to be the singular focus of every single discussion of economic inequlity, and I don't think it's productive to pan this essay for not really addressing that.
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Regardless of my personal perspective, this is unfair. He stated a position which is not only widely disputed, but the dispute over which has an entire field of media and academics devoted to it, and which routinely splits the population roughly half and half (look at basically any election result in the western world). And he disagreed with your side. He's in the other 50% of the population from you. To claim that b…
This isn't really about red vs. blue -- the "red" side acknowledges massive wealth inequality as a genuinely bad thing as much as the blue does (recall the president most known for trust busting, and recall the 'R' next to his name -- Republicans like markets, not wealth inequality). The two sides just have different explanations for what causes it and what will resolve it. This is about understanding an issue. The e…
If you want examples of why this isn't a good idea, just read any politics thread on social media, and look for the point at which they inevitably degenerate into "no, that's not what you're saying".
Since it apparently wasn't clear enough from my earlier post: the argument that has been made for centuries is that the other side doesn't exist, is clearly wrong anyway, and nobody could possibly agree with them. The main problem with this argument is that the people who make it seem to have found somebody to argue with.
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Rent collecting or rent-seeking behavior has a special meaning in economics. It's different from investing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking A an example of rent collecting would be if he used his wealth to lobby for a law requiring all start-ups to have a license which an organization he controlled granted (and charged for).
Thanks; I edited my comment. The point remains, though, that PG is not "creating wealth" under the terms laid out in his essay.
Angel investing and venture capital are jobs that are also prone to the Peter Principle. What makes them different than many other jobs, especially angel investing, is that the person has promoted themselves to their own level of incompetence. Just because some (maybe many) angel investors are incompetent and don't contribute to wealth creation does not mean that none do.
His essay focused on one particular lever, technology. His original lever was technology. Now he uses other levers, economic capital, social capital and experience to create wealth. Extracting value from economic capital alone is rent seeking. This is what banks do with loans. Providing economic capital with advise on how to most intelligently make the most of the capital goes beyond mere rent seeking and enters the realm of wealth creating activities.
His mention of 'arguing on the internet' as one of the few specific examples of time-wasting behavior makes it hard not to read it as a reaction. I absolutely believe he values time. But I also absolutely believe that he is using this as a public excuse as to why he's running away from the criticism of his previous essay; a previous essay which was quite possibly the most flawed piece of writing he's ever let loose o…
I might have agreed with you but the way you're presenting your argument makes me want to dismiss you outright. There's a lot of ad hominen and strawman in your post, maybe you want to rethink how you're making your point?
I think that it is 100% useless to attempt to persuade him away from his rediscovery of social darwinism.
The man thinks that those concerned with income inequality want communist style income equality. He's detached from reality. There aren't words that will fix that sort of broken. This has become a situation where you can't reason a man out of a situation that he arrived to unreasonably.
He has beliefs that... aren't reasonable, that aren't related to reality... he is surrounded by rich people who share those beliefs. I'm just some poor whose net worth is only in the single digit millions and who only makes a couple hundred K per year. I'm nobody to him.
so y'know... why try? Why not just make a throwaway account, and engage in angry honesty? Sure, it's not polite... but it's deeply honest.
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edit: and to be clear, I don't think pg is like, some bad dude. I've met him, I think he really loves helping people, and I don't mind that he got rich. But that essay... that essay showed that he's become disconnected in a dangerous and fundamental way and it makes me sad and angry and disappointed.... it's horrible to see somebody who used to use their skills and knowledge to generate such good start using them to lobby for social darwinistic bullshit. it's awful, and painful, and sad... and I know that nothing I say will make him change. Nobody who goes down the road he's on comes back reformed a better man. He's just going to become a bigger piece of shit as he gets more powerful, more financial successful, as more people will line up to tell him how right he is. And that's incredibly sad.
His mention of 'arguing on the internet' as one of the few specific examples of time-wasting behavior makes it hard not to read it as a reaction. I absolutely believe he values time. But I also absolutely believe that he is using this as a public excuse as to why he's running away from the criticism of his previous essay; a previous essay which was quite possibly the most flawed piece of writing he's ever let loose o…
The much better feeling than winning an argument is overcoming the urge to argue and defend.